Modular Course Design in Online Education<\/h1>\n
Modular course design has been highly recommended by various pioneers in online education. Stephen Downes<\/a> (Downes, 1998) stated in \u201cThe Future of Online Learning\u201d that, \u201c…Online courses will be modular. A course \u2013 especially from the designer level \u2013 will no longer be seen as a single unit, but rather, as a collection of component parts, each of which may be replaced or upgraded as the need arises.\u201d Andrea Henne (Kelly, 2009<\/a>) recommended that \u201cmodular course design benefits online instructors and students.\u201d The Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education Final Report (2014)<\/a> suggests \u201can action plan that includes the goals to identify any new or existing MITx <\/i>course that could be produced as modules; produce the \u201csticky\u201d modules associated with these subjects; define a limited set of standalone (\u201csmooth\u201d) modules and produce these; put in place a well-organized repository of existing and new modules and define guidelines for building and credentialing customized courses.\u201d<\/p>\n With Ecampus\u2019s move to Canvas, modular course design is even easier to implement. Our online courses are generally formatted into 11 weeks as 11 modules. We used a modular course design template for creating each week\u2019s learning content, which includes:<\/p>\n Our template is very similar to Henne\u2019s template (Kelly, 2009), which consists of learning objectives, see table 1 for comparison of the two templates.<\/p>\n Table 1. Comparison of Global Public Health – H 333\u2019s course design template and Henne\u2019s course design template.<\/p>\n This weekly modular template, however, should not limit us from organizing learning content into even smaller units within a weekly module. Here is an example of two modular learning content units within one week in Global Public Health – H 333<\/a>. The highlighted boxes show two modular content units within Week 1.<\/p>\n Image 1. Screenshot of Global Public Health – H 333 online course Week 1 Learning module<\/p>\n Therefore, if you have a course that has heavy content within each week, feel free to break them into smaller learning modules instead of putting them together as a long big piece.<\/p>\n Enjoy designing and teaching online in Canvas.<\/p>\n References: Downes, S. (1998). The Future of Online Learning. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, <\/i>Volume I, Number 3, Fall 1998. State University of West Georgia, Distance Education Center.<\/i><\/p>\n Kelly, Rob. (2009). A Modular Course Design Benefits Online Instructor and Students. Faculty Focus. September 2009. <\/i>Retrieved on July 24th, 2015 from http:\/\/www.facultyfocus.com\/articles\/online-education\/a-modular-course-design-benefits-online-instructor-and-students\/<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n Institute-wide Task Force on the Future of MIT Education: Final Report<\/a>, July 28, 2013, pp. 49\u201350.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why Modular Course Design The Course Development & Training team at Oregon State University Ecampus promotes modular course design in our online courses. Laura Crowder (2011) defines modular content as \u201ca collection of learning resources developed as a single learning object\u201d. The major benefits of modular course design include: Saving time in the development and… Continue reading Modular Course Design at OSU Ecampus<\/h1>\n
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\nCrowder, L. (2011). How to develop modular content in 4 easy steps. retrieved from http:\/\/www.learninghouse.com\/blog\/publishing\/how-to-develop-modular-content-in-4-easy-steps<\/a> on July 28, 2015.<\/p>\n